Different Threads
by Can'tStopImagining
Summary: Five times Lorna wore Nicky's clothes, and one time she didn't.


**Different Threads (or Five Times Lorna Wore Nicky's Clothes, and One Time She Didn't)**

 **A/N:** I don't really know what prompted this but I've missed writing this pairing. Taking prompts here or on tumblr, if anyone's interested. This is un-beta'd so any mistakes are my own. Thanks for bearing with me...

1.

She's shivering in an orange uniform and it's December and the trees are bare of leaves, and there's a hint of snow in the air, and she first sees her sitting cross legged on a bunk bed, frowning over a bunch of wires. She's a single body of beige in a sea of orange, and Lorna wonders about her, even as she's ferried along to her own dorm room. She's given soap and a toothbrush and a pile of bedding, and she nods blankly, silent tears still settling on her cheeks. The last thing her sister told her before she was taken away was not to cry, not to show weakness, but it's too late now.

It's overwhelming. She pulses through hallways, shoved by bigger, stronger women and followed by catcalls and insults and threats, and she doesn't have time to think about anything but putting one foot in front of the other. She forgets about the girl with the lion's mane. She concentrates on fitting in, on drifting through the crowd, and not being on anybody's radar.

Lorna makes it onto her radar without even meaning to.

She has a reputation. It's clear in the way she swaggers through hallways and rests against walls with her body too close to someone else's. Her words are coarse and she has the ability to break your heart in one quick flick of her wrist. But Lorna sees something else in her, even from afar.

The first time Nicky flirts with her - and she's not even Nicky at this point, just Nichols, no first name (when she finds out her name's legitimately _Nicky Nichols,_ some time later, she laughs so hard her jaw hurts) - it's as obvious as if it had come with a giant neon sign above it, and it makes Lorna's cheeks pink, but she pinches her lips together and shrugs her off. She doesn't want to be a play toy. She thinks Nicky will get over it, knows that she could have her pick of any girl in this joint, and isn't surprised when she shuffles off, throwing a 'yeah well, your loss' over her shoulder, no doubt in search for her next piece of prey.

Lorna's getting a hang of pretending to be strong. It's the hardest pretence she's ever had to endure, but certainly not the first. She's a born liar, she thinks. It's engraved in her bones.

Nicky's advances come again, once, twice, three times, and each time Lorna says no, but her resolve is beginning to thin. It's only been a week.

They're unlikely friends; the swaggering dyke, and the hopeless romantic. She throws herself into planning her wedding. It starts out as a private project, and she doesn't know why she's doing it, but it passes time, and she's desperate. Nicky snatches the notebook out of her hands (she's still not Nicky, but Nichols, and Lorna isn't sure if she classes her as a friend, or whether she's just looking at her, awestruck; she hasn't made her mind up yet) and tosses her head back in laughter as she scans the pages.

(Later, Lorna sees her in her own bunk, bent over a sketchbook, and she wonders what she's drawing and why she looks like fire trapped in a hurricane.)

Prison's like high school, and it's all consuming, and Nicky Nichols doesn't sit on the top of the pile. Lorna drifts through groups of people like a chameleon, blending and changing and forming herself into places where she might belong. But Nicky's a constant. Nicky, who sits next to her in the cafeteria, and who finds her in the hallways, and who slinks into her bunk like she lives there. Nicky who tells a dirty joke in a room full of people, but still finds _her_ eyes in the crowd, time after time, like she's the only one whose opinion matters. Like she's looking for Lorna's approval only.

Sometimes the way her brows furrow, the way her lips curve around Lorna's name… it's like she's begging, pleading with her, but the words never come out. Lorna's seen how she is with other women. She grabs a girl's ass in the hallway, invites her to her bunk in broad daylight, doesn't mince her words. With Lorna, it's like some sort of game, and Lorna doesn't know why she reacts to it, but she does. Maybe that's the point.

Finally, she snaps.

"You only hang around me because you wanna fuck me, don't you?" Lorna says, standing on tip toes to close the inch gap between them, and sounding stronger than she feels.

She thinks a part of her is longing to hear the word 'yes'.

The interim is unimportant. She squeezes her eyes closed, and she begs Nicky not to kiss her, and they end up in a dark chapel, her back pressed against cold wood, and there's something ironic about the way the light hits the cross dangling around her neck as she screams Nicky's name.

A while later, Nicky pulls her sweatshirt over Lorna's shivering body without a second thought. She's still in orange, and her sleeves are short and it's fucking December and there's snow on the ground, but they haven't thought to give her a sweatshirt yet. Lorna digs her fingers into the soft, worn edges of the sleeves and stares intently at Nicky, wondering why she doesn't feel the way she thought she would.

"So, I'm like your prison bitch now, that's how it works, right?" she says, through teeth that have only just stopped chattering. She crosses her arms across her body and prays she looks tougher than she feels.

Nicky doesn't laugh. Her expression is unusually solemn, "christ, kid, no." She presses her back against the wall and her eyes fall to her lap. She doesn't look like someone who has just conquered new territory. It doesn't look like a victory.

"I can't protect you," she whispers, and Lorna doesn't understand, but wants to. She crawls into Nicky's lap and she thought this was supposed to be fun, but Nicky looks like her whole world has collapsed around her.

"I don't need protecting," she lies.

2.

Lorna likes wearing Nicky's clothes. It seems stupid because it isn't like they're any different from her own. A grey t-shirt is a grey t-shirt is a grey t-shirt. But they smell different, and for the first few weeks, it makes her giddy to know she's walking around in Nicky's t-shirt, or Nicky's sweater, or Nicky's underwear, and nobody can tell the difference.

It doesn't remain a secret for long. They don't really make any effort to conceal it, which she thinks she should worry about more, but she doesn't. The name Christopher dies on her lips, dries up and shrivels like it doesn't belong there anymore. She puts away her wedding plans. She doodles hearts with 'I love Nicky' in and doesn't let anyone see.

It isn't love. It's a coping mechanism. That's what she's telling herself.

3.

She can't be mad because she broke it off. It was her doing. She ended things. She can't be mad.

(She is mad. If not at Nicky then at herself.)

(Definitely at herself.)

She has a pair of socks in her drawer that don't belong to her. The name tag is worn, but clearly reads N. Nichols in black sharpie pen. The letters have bled together. There's a hole in the toe that's been sewn up. They aren't missed by anybody.

Lorna wants to pretend she's strong. She puts on her usual cheerful exterior, and she bites her tongue before she tells Nicky she misses her. She says things she doesn't mean. They fight because they're over and because they can't hang out like they used to and she gets angry at Nicky because she knows it's her own fault but she can't bear to beat herself up over it anymore.

Nicky brushes fingers through her hair with the tenderness she reserves only for her and Red, and Lorna juts her bottom lip out, forces herself not to cry.

She's only strong because she has to be.

She wears the socks for six days in a row.

4.

The liquid is the colour of water from a storm drain, and the contents burns Lorna's tongue, but she gulps it down anyway, taking her turn eagerly, if only because she enjoys the way Nicky's fingers brush against hers when she passes the jar across. She doesn't want to look weak. It's one of those things that plagues her mind more than anything else, though she admits to using it to her advantage when the occasion invites it.

This is not an occasion for weakness. Though the alcohol burns her throat and fuels a fire in her stomach, makes her head spin when she moves, she drinks it down and pretends to enjoy it. The thrill of doing something she shouldn't be doing makes her nerve endings buzz. She was always a goody-two-shoes. (until she wasn't and then she really wasn't and now she wakes up in a prison every morning). She thinks this is a Lorna her sister would like, drunk and without a care, and giggling like a pre-teen whose snuck into their parents' liquor cabinet.

She hopes it's a Lorna that Nicky would like. Would love.

She glances at Nicky, at the way her lips curve. Her eyelashes are thick, her eyes cast downwards. She laughs, and Lorna feels it in the pit of her stomach. She wants to blame it on the alcohol, but that would be dishonest.

At lights out, she feels giddy and warm and empty all at the same time and the thought of going back to her cold, empty bunk makes her cling to Nicky like she's drowning. They fall into Nicky's bunk instead, a tangle of limbs and giggles so loud that she presses her fingers to Lorna's lips to quiet her.

Lorna wants to kiss her fingertips. She wants to kiss every blank slope of Nicky's body, to explore every part of her. But she can't. Even when they were doing this all the time, even when falling together like this was as routine as mealtimes, they didn't kiss, and she knows if she starts now, she won't be able to stop.

Lights out is a stupid phrase, because the lights never turn off. Lorna lies against her, her face so close to Nicky's that she can feel her warm, drunk breath on her face, can trace every freckle on her face like constellations in the sky.

"Let's not do this, huh?" Nicky says, and her voice is low and gravelly and Lorna remembers the way it sounds when it's grinding out her name, mid-moan - not that she ever forgot.

She wants to. She really wants to. She thinks maybe this is what she wanted all along, when she pressed that glass of liquor to her lips, she had this on her mind. She curses Nicky for doing the right thing.

An 'I love you' slips out, and then she's asleep, drifting through dreams of kisses and touches and words that she wishes she was brave enough to say.

When she wakes up, her mouth feels like its filled with cotton balls, and her head's spinning. She's alone in the bunk. She moves half an inch, and regrets it. She's not had a hangover since she was a teenager, since she had her drink spiked at a junior high spring formal and woke up teary eyed and aching all over.

When she finally manages to crawl out, she pulls Nicky's sweatshirt over her head. It's soft and warm, and smells inexplicably of her, and she drowns in the comfort of it. It's too big for her, the sleeves reaching past her fingers, the hem halfway down her thighs. She thinks she might never take it off.

5.

Nicky goes to max. Lorna watches, her face pressed so close to the window that when she eventually peels back, the condensation from her breath forms a perfect O. Even her eyelashes have left an imprint on the glass.

She collapses in on herself like a house of cards. Nicky is the planet she orbits and without her, she is lost. Red picks up her pieces but she can't quite paste her together, and Lorna pushes her away, can't bear to be touched unless it's by _her_. She pushes through hallways, tears clouding her vision, blindly searching for somewhere she might feel safe, knowing the only place has gone, is in the back of a prison van, isn't coming back.

By the time she gets to Nicky's bunk, Boo is helping herself to her drawers, another inmate going through the box of stuff by her bed. Others are circling like vultures. It's been less than five minutes. She screams at them to get out and her voice is stronger than she feels, sends them scattering. She snatches back a packet of pretzels. Boo holds her radio out of reach, and leaves with a smirk on her face.

Lorna collapses on the bed. She feels like something's scratching around her stomach, clawing to get out. Her head's spinning. She can hear a CO in the distance, shouting, but she doesn't care. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.

She bundles herself up in Nicky's things, curls up in Nicky's bed and clutches her notebook to her heart. She sobs until she can't breathe and she can't see for tears, and every muscle in her body aches.

Hours later, she heads back to her own bunk. She doesn't sleep. She wraps Nicky's sweater around her, pretends it feels like being in her arms. She breathes in her smell, aches for the touch of her fingers on her skin, thinks she might never stop crying.

6.

Lorna loops her fingers through the worn fabric of Nicky's t-shirt, through the holes around the neckline that have been sewn up multiple times. Litchfield is cheap; you get one set of everything, and if they don't last your stay, you fix them up yourselves. You make do. Every scar in the fabric is a reminder of how long she'd stayed, how long she'd walked the halls before she'd disappeared and never came back.

She tucks them back - the t-shirt, the sweatshirt, the vest - into the bottom drawer, and exhales heavily.

She'll borrow something else, she thinks. Something from Red, or from Chapman, or from one of the other girls. Or, maybe she won't. It isn't like she's going to have the white dress, the veil, the fairytale wedding anyway.

She can't bear to have a part of Nicky with her, but at the same time, she needs the strength she pulls from it. She runs her fingers over the cold sweatshirt, and pulls back, closes the drawer with a sense of finality. Tomorrow, she'll be Lorna Muccio, and she won't need a drawer of someone else's clothes. She won't need to be _that_ Lorna anymore. She'll have a wedding band on her finger, and a heart full of love for somebody else, and she won't go to this drawer every morning, she won't sleep with a t-shirt over her pillow case.

This has to be the cure, because if it isn't, she doesn't know what is.


End file.
